


Safe and Happy (At Least in Theory)

by hopelessbookgeek



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, F/M, Secretly Married, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 21:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14554191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelessbookgeek/pseuds/hopelessbookgeek
Summary: "He didn’t know how long things would last, couldn’t know when they’d retire if they ever did, but he wanted the last time she called him “husband” to be just like the first: warm, quiet, and dizzy with happiness that ran bone-deep." York is sick of keeping secrets and has to rely on daydreams and stolen moments instead.





	Safe and Happy (At Least in Theory)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Legendaerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/gifts).



> This is Saro's fault as usual

Carolina was taking  _ forever. _

She was rooming with South, who had long since taken off to hang out with Niner, only she’d left the door locked so York had to wait in the hallway for her to get out of the damn shower. Normally she showered and changed faster than he did. Admittedly black tie was a little different from her usual leggings and ponytail, but…

God but he wished he could room with her. North forced him to room with him, saying that he would make him go while Carolina would probably help him set off firecrackers under the buffet. He wondered if North would change his mind knowing they were together. Probably not.

Together was a generous way of putting it, actually. North thought they were partners in crime, Wash thought friends, South knew they slept together. Not a soul onboard beyond York and Carolina knew about the rings they kept in their bedside tables, and only wore when they were alone together.

Finally York heard the bathroom door open, heard Carolina shuffle something around, then stumble and swear. “Almost ready?” he called.

“Almost,” she called back. “Just looking for my key-card.”

“I’ll pick the lock for you if you need it,” is what he wanted to say, but she opened the door part way through and he trailed off into more like, “I’ll pick the llllllluuuuuuuh.”

“Guessing that’s not so bad,” she said with a little smile, and he had no idea what to say at all. She wore black, a floor-length gown with sleeves that slipped off her strong shoulders, tight to mid-thigh and cascading out from there. And her  _ hair, _ he loved her hair more than he could say and it was piled into a slightly messy updo. He didn’t care about makeup, had never cared, didn’t know a thing about it, would’ve hated if she covered up the little freckles on her nose, but the slightest line of black around her eyes made them look wide and electric.

He couldn’t bear to kiss her and ruin her pretty red lipstick but he couldn’t bear not to kiss her at all so he cupped her jaw and pressed his lips to her cheek very softly. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “You look so beautiful.”

“I thought you’d like it,” she said. He couldn’t see her shoes under her dress but even if she wore heels, he towered over her. She was looking up at him with worry lines in her forehead and he wanted very badly to smooth them away. “I picked the dress thinking you’d like it.”

“I love it. I couldn’t picture you in some big ball gown.”

She smoothed a hand down her side and he couldn’t help but follow the lines of her body. He knew her body better than his own by now but he was used to seeing her silhouette naked; she trained in armor. She had knockout hips and thick thighs and her dress made that fact very, very visible.

“You look so good in a suit, Eli,” she said softly, and it made his heart ache. No one called him by his birth name, even his closest friends. Anyone with access to his medical records would see HART, ELIJAH J at the top but only his mom had ever called him Eli until he told that to Carolina, who asked if she could call him that too sometimes, when they were alone. Everyone called him York solely as a shorthand for New York, for the state he’d never been to that defined him in battle. Carolina called him Eli when she wanted him to know she loved the parts of him that were distinct and separate from Project Freelancer.

He loved those parts of her, too, so sometimes he would take more time with her than he should and trace invented constellations in the freckles on her shoulders and he would call her Lina. When she swept his feet out from under him on the training floor, she was Carolina; when she was spiking the punch at the Christmas party, she was Carolina; when they were hollering at each other from hundreds of feet away just to be loud and annoying, she was Carolina; when she was half-asleep on his chest with her hand absently rubbing his hipbone, her hair brushing his collarbone and her legs wound with his, she was Lina, light and sweet and his.

“I love you,” he said, because he’d forgotten how to say anything else. “I love you so much, and I know we have to go downstairs and pretend like we don’t mean anything to each other but until we get in that elevator I want you to know that whatever happens and wherever we go, you’ll be my wife.”

She smiled prettily; she did everything prettily. He liked her strong and wild and fierce and loud, loved her scars and muscles and the thin pale stretch marks on her hips and thighs, but she reminded him of trellis roses. The vines looked too thin and delicate to hold up such heavy blossoms but they outlived daffodils and hydrangeas to bloom again and again until winter.

“Husband,” she said, so quietly that no one else could’ve heard her even if anyone else was around. “My husband.”

The first time she called him husband had been the night they got married, when they snuck away from the group on shore leave. He used what little money he had, made up the rest with charisma, and bought them a matched set of rings, stainless steel plated with gold. The ceremony was shotgun and the priest was skeptical and he was on the verge of tears the whole time. He didn’t get to see her in white, had never seen her in white, she wore the “North Carolina: We Like Being On Top” shirt South had bought her as a joke over a bathing suit, he wore swim trunks and a muscle tank.

They were in a motel and North didn’t care if they roomed together, thought nothing of it, Wash specifically asked to room with North so he could get some goddamn sleep, so York took his time with Carolina and kissed her deep and slow. They could do fast and rough in the showers when they had to hurry anyway, he didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want to waste this. He kissed his way up her thighs and stayed there for half an hour until she was boneless with pleasure, and when he bowed over her and finally sank inside her as deep as he could go, she tipped her head back and sighed “my husband” and he almost finished right there.

He didn’t know how long things would last, couldn’t know when they’d retire if they ever did, but he wanted the last time she called him “husband” to be just like the first: warm, quiet, and dizzy with happiness that ran bone-deep.

“We should go,” he said, already regretful. He wanted so badly just to sleep with her in the most innocuous sense, to feel her heart beating slow and steady against his chest, to know they were safe until morning. But he couldn’t very well kick South out for a whole night and he couldn’t explain to North why he needed the room to himself. “Hey, uh, I know we can’t do this once we get out of the elevator, but could you– could you hold my hand? I just want you close.”

“Anything,” she said. “Anything.” Her hands were small and callused and usually kind of cold but they fit so perfectly in his own and instantly he felt calmer. And then, because it was all too much, she blew it off and started walking. “You know you don’t need to push too hard for me to do anything you want with my hands.”

And because it was all too much for him too, he followed her like he always did and set his trademark crooked grin on his face. “And the same goes for you. If we’re being honest I’d really like to get three fingers so deep that you’ll feel–” But he didn’t want to say it, not like that.

“Feel?” she asked anyway, pressed the down elevator button.

“Feel good,” he finished lamely, but Carolina knew him too well to let him get away with that and gave him a bright sharp look. “Feel my ring,” he said instead and she looked away.

“I’d like that,” she said, and it was so pure and simple that he was overwhelmed with how much he loved her. He thought about her all the time, always had, but sometimes it hit him like he’d stuck his finger in a wall socket and he had to fight to take a deep breath.

“Good,” he said, and then the elevator doors opened. “Hey, I was thinking.”

“That’s amazing,” she said with a half-smile, leaning against his arm.

“When did you first realize you love me?”

The question hung out there like clothes on a line and they got into the elevator. Carolina had her brows furrowed in that intense way she got, and she pressed the button for the top floor. “Oh,” he said, “I thought it was on the ground floor.”

“It is. But we’re talking.” God, he loved her. “I don’t know, really. It wasn’t any one thing you did. I guess I just woke up one morning and decided I liked being with you a lot more than not, and realized I was planning my days around your schedule.”

That was Carolina all over, the most nebulous sort of affection. Carolina loved him primordially– from the beginning of the world to the end of it. “What about you?” she asked. “When did you know?”

“When North broke his leg.” It was a mess of a thing. North did not handle captivity very well and when he tried to leave too soon, he re-fractured his bones and had to undergo treatment for fat emboli. “I came in to visit before early morning training. He was passed out and you were sleeping in a chair next to his bed, and D said you’d been there all night… I always knew you had a big heart but it all just sort of hit me. I looked over at you and thought  _ I want her to care about me that much _ and then  _ oh fuck. _ ”

That made her laugh. She had a throaty bell of a laugh and he smiled every time he heard it, a mirror neuron response sure as a yawn. “So kind of  _ oh, fuck me _ that turned into  _ oh, yeah, fuck me.” _

“Pretty much, yeah. I knew I wanted you before then. It was the love I was missing.”

She smiled, squeezed his hand. “And now?”

“Now I’ve got more love than I know what to do with.” She never stayed the night, so sometimes after she left, when Wash was asleep or out, he’d lie back still feeling her warm on his thighs and just slide on his ring to watch the gold catch D’s light. “Love isn’t the problem now. It’s the rest of the world.”

Did she ever think about defecting like he did? He didn’t mean it seriously– at least he didn’t think he did– but sometimes, in a sleepless late night alone or when he was inside her and they were chest to chest caught between heartbeats, the wild poetic side of him wanted to run away to somewhere no one would call him York. He would be Elijah, Eli only to his pretty wife, and they could have a house with a garden. He had skills, he was so good with his hands, he’d make a damn good mechanic if he didn’t stick to locksmithing, and Carolina– Lina– she could do anything. Maybe she’d be tired of working. Maybe she’d want to stay at home, finally able to read something for fun. Maybe he’d stay with her sometimes and buff up on his language skills– maybe he could translate something for him– maybe he could  _ write _ something for her– maybe, maybe.

The elevator dinged on the top floor and Carolina reached out, reluctantly tapped the ground floor button. “Well,” she said, “time to party.”

***

The first hour was easy. He spent an hour away from her all the time, and it had been too long since he’d had the chance to just shoot the breeze with South, who regaled him with a very long story about the shenanigans she got up to before the party. “Nice outfit,” he said once he got a moment’s peace.

She immediately scowled and looked down at her simple dress the same blue as her eyes. “I wanted a suit and they gave me this instead. I look ridiculous. My brother would look better in this dress than I do. Do you see him? He looks like fucking King Kong.”

North was at the window chatting with Wash, and the cut of his suit did emphasize his broad barrel chest. “It does look like he’s got more going on up top than you do.”

“Why do you think they called him  _ North? _ He’s got the nice chest and pretty face, I’ve got the great ass and bombass pussy.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “God, South, if I didn’t know you were a lesbian, I’d say you and I would be the perfect couple.”

“You fuckin’  _ wish, _ dude. You’re not pretty enough for my tastes.”

There was no reason he should be affronted about that, and yet. “So if there was some chick here with a butch haircut and one eye, you’d turn that down out of hand?”

“Depends. Does she have your terrible personality?”

“Let’s say no.”

“Yeah, I’d probably smash.”

“Let’s say yes.”

“I’m going to beat you in the face and ass,” she said, but she smiled.

***

Hours two and three were harder. He’d catch her eye from across the room sometimes and the corner of her mouth would twitch up like she had to fight the urge not to smile, and that made it a little easier.

But this sort of schmoozing was  _ boring _ without his partner in crime. He wanted to make fun of the guy with the purple tie who looked like a ham and bragged about being on his fourth marriage. He wanted to brush his fingers against the delicate bones of her wrist and smell the hotel shampoo in her hair. He wanted to relax fully in a conversation instead of half-listening because he was aching to be somewhere else. He wanted, he wanted.

So at the start of hour four he blew off North, saying he had to use the bathroom, and when he passed Carolina on the way he gave her the level-steady look that meant  _ better be soon,  _ and he knew she’d follow him once she could do so discreetly.

He found an employee bathroom that was technically  _ under construction  _ so York was pretty sure they wouldn’t be caught. At this point he didn’t really care if they were. The lying about where they’d been was hard, but pretending they didn’t mean anything to each other except as friends, that was harder. Every time he deflected some accusation of a crush, he sent a silent prayer to her as an apology.

The door didn’t lock so he sent Delta as a lookout and unzipped Carolina’s dress a lot slower than he should have. “You really are so beautiful,” he said, dragging his knuckles down the ridge of her spine to make her shiver. “But color me surprised that you own sexy underwear.”

“I didn’t until recently,” she said, laying the dress carefully over the door of the stall. In black lace and heels, with her hair up and her lipstick a little smudged, she was achingly lovely. “Had to make a request.”

“And Niner didn’t care?”

She smiled and leaned against the wall, let him press her there. “I didn’t ask Niner, I went to one of the lower-tier pilots.”

Oh, God. Some of those lower-tier pilots were painfully shy once the hero-worship set in, and the idea of Carolina walking boldly up and saying she wanted black lace was incredibly distracting, absolutely hilarious, and more than a little hot. “You know we don’t have time to do this,” he said, in case she wanted to stop.

“We’ve never had time,” she said, hooking a knee around his hip. She did it with the same casual confidence she always had but her eyes were soft, adoring, and sad. “We’ll make time. Won’t we? Won’t you make time for me?”

“Yes,” he promised, fumbling at his belt. “Yes. Always. I’ll make time for you if I have to rewrite the universe to make a day twenty-five hours.” It was such a stupid thing to say, North would’ve given him hell, but Carolina turned him into an idiot and he didn’t regret a second.

They didn’t have a condom, very rarely did, and she was on birth control but he couldn’t help but think– “Do you ever wonder,” he asked, hands supporting her thighs as he pushed inside her, “about having a baby?”

A few loose strands of hair slipped down her cheek. “That depends,” she said. “ _ A _ baby, or  _ your _ baby?”

“Either.”

“I don’t want  _ a _ baby,” she said, and he was in her as deep as he could go. He used to love sex in all kinds of ways, all different positions, but now he couldn’t stand the thought of not looking into her eyes when they were this close. “I want  _ your _ baby.”

His heart stopped dead in his chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, and sighed, eyes slipping closed as her head dropped back against the wall. He pulled out and pushed back in, slow, slow. “When we get out of here. I want to have a house, a backyard… you can take me out late at night in the summer and we can make a baby under the stars.”

He could’ve come just then, and it took all his willpower not to. He had to drop his head, press it to hers, pause. There was no feeling in all the universe like being inside a woman but even that was eclipsed by that woman being his wife. “What do you want? A boy or a girl?”

“Anything you give me,” she said, like he was giving her anything. All he did was fuck her senseless. It would be her blood, her bones, her mitochondrial DNA that made a child. “You?”

“A girl,” he said. “Girls. More than one. Girls with your eyes, and your laugh…”

“Weird,” she said, “and loud.”

“Unique,” he corrected, “and enchanting. Baby, I’m not gonna last like this…”

“Come,” she told him, and his hips rolled.

“Inside you?”

“Home,” she said. “Come home.”

He had no choice; he’d always done everything she asked of him. They cried out together, forehead to forehead, hipbone to hipbone. The faint pulsing of her muscles made him twitch and in a perfect world he could fall asleep like that, with her in his arms, still inside her.

York was absolutely loath to let her go but once they’d caught their breath, he had to, so they could clean up. Carolina wiped her thighs where his come had spilled out of her and he wanted to drop to his knees and lick her clean, but that would take time they never, ever had.

“What do you think would happen?” she asked as he zipped her dress up. This time when his knuckles brushed her bare skin,  _ he _ shivered.

“What would happen when?”

“If I got pregnant. Now, tonight, even with the IUD.”

Oh, oh. He fought back all his months of accumulated daydreams about girls with blue eyes. “Do you want what I really think, or do you want a pretty story?”

“Both.”

“We’d be free,” he said, stepped back so she could fix her hair. “We’d be discharged, maybe dishonorably but together. We’d have a house with a garden, and we’d have the most beautiful baby.” Her hair was as neat as it would ever be so he embraced her from behind, cradled her belly like it would ripen at his touch.

She sighed and leaned back against him. “I think we’d have a girl,” she said softly. “A girl with red hair and blue eyes.”

“Me too. I think we’d make girls together.” A boy would be good too, a brunette boy with a loud laugh and sweet smiles, but with Carolina, York wanted a houseful of girls. “There’s your pretty story. In reality…” He sighed, held her closer. “In reality they’d force an abortion on you, right? If you refused they might do it anyway, or they’d flat kick you out. They’d never let me go with you.”

She sighed again and he  _ ached _ to know he wasn’t making her happy. “But look at it this way,” he said, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. He loved the smell of her hair. “No matter what, they can’t un-marry us. If we get kicked out, reassigned, whatever, you’re my wife. Wherever we go, you’re my wife. Til death, right?”

He couldn’t see her smile but heard it in her voice. “You’re such a romantic, York. You’re such a geek.”

“What’s that say about  _ you? _ You’re married to this geek. You’re in  _ love _ with this geek. Your babies are gonna be geeks too.”

“My babies,” she said with laughter in her throat, “are going to be the most stubborn, sentimental, badass, beloved kids ever born.”

“Funny like their daddy,” he said against her hair. “Beautiful like their mama.”

“Safe and happy.”

“Safe and happy,” he agreed.”

***

He let her leave first, only followed a couple minutes later chatting with Delta as if he’d just gotten caught up in that, and that was why he was gone so long. If anyone noticed that his disappearance and Carolina’s intersected, no one said anything about it. What he wanted more than anything was to join her conversation, but he knew, he  _ knew _ he’d be looking at her starry-eyed and he didn’t trust himself there, so he trudged miserable to North, still at the window. Wash had disappeared.

“You look like you’re having no fun at all,” said North, sipping a glass of wine.

“I’m really not.” He touched his palm to the window, stared out at the city; the hotel was on a hill and there was nothing quite like a skyline all lit up after dark. “Bored. Just so goddamn bored.”

“Go talk to someone more interesting than me, then. South, if she’s still around. Or, hell, go talk to Carolina, I haven’t seen you with her in a while.”

York couldn’t lie for shit so he didn’t want to say anything to that, but North must’ve seen something in his expression anyway because he frowned. “You don’t want to talk to Carolina?”

“It’s… complicated.”

“Did you fight?”

“No…”

“Are you in love with her?”

Oh, God, if he had any wits about him he’d deny it outright but he hesitated just a moment too long and North knew. “Yes,” he said simply.

“How long?”

“Year and a half.”

North blew out a breath and stared out the window too. “And she knows?”

“Knows, reciprocates, kisses me stupid when we’re alone.”

“Who knows?”

“Delta,” said York, “and you.”

And it sounded so sad laid out like that. A year and a half with the love of his life and he couldn’t tell his best friends. He couldn’t tell  _ anyone, _ couldn’t scream it from the rooftops like he wanted, couldn’t even wear the goddamn ring.

“Wow,” said North. “Anything else you’re hiding?”

“Nope,” he said, but it was too quick, too obvious.

“You’re sure? There’s nothing else?”

“Leave it, North.”

“I want to help!” he insisted, and he sounded like he meant it. “But I can’t keep a secret I don’t know about.”

For a moment York hovered on the brink of arguing, but then he reached into his pocket and took out his ring, handed it to North. “No,” said North immediately. “No, no, no. Please don’t tell me this is what I think it is.”

“Depends. Do you think it’s a wedding ring?”

_ “York!” _

“Like you’ve never done something stupid out of love.” That was unfair, that was wildly unfair to everything that he and Carolina had been to each other. It had been a short-notice decision but they both admitted later they’d been thinking about it for a while. York had a lot of regrets and Carolina wasn’t any of them, even if the things he had to do to keep this hidden were a lot of them.

“At least you understand it was a mistake,” North said, handing the ring back. 

For a moment York went to put it on, but bit his lip and dropped it back in his pocket instead, frowning. “It was crazy unwise, but I don’t regret it. I love her to… distraction. To disruption. To the end of the universe. I’m not an idiot,” he said, cutting North off before he could argue. “I’m not expecting a white picket fence. Do you know what I’d give to retire with her? Do you know how much it kills me that I can’t give her a baby? Do you know how many nights I lie awake terrified we’ll be found out, or miserable that we can’t sleep together?”

“Why can’t you sleep together? IUD is standard procedure for female troops.”

York just  _ crumbled, _ fell forward so his forehead was pressed to the window beside his palm. “No one understands,” he said softly. “We have sex, it isn’t about the sex. It’s not about being on top of her or beneath her or behind her. It’s about being  _ beside _ her. I know I’m a– I’m a flirt, but I’m still a man. I want to be…  _ tender, _ I guess. Doesn’t that make sense? Don’t you want that too?”

North was clearly fighting back his paternal side, the one with an intense urge to chastise York for being unwise. He succeeded in holding it in, which York appreciated. They were best friends, North was the kind of friend who might have been his best man if things had been different. “You’re right,” said North. “You’re right. Love is… a gift. Just be careful. Be happy, if you can, but be careful."

York glanced at him quick. “You won’t rat us out?”

“I wouldn’t have ever ratted you out, York, you’re my best friend.” That almost made him smile. “If she makes you happy– if you make her happy– I’m happy too. Just disappointed.”

“Disappointed?”

“Well,” said North with a grin, “South and I would’ve thrown you a  _ killer _ bachelor party.”

York could not quite muster up the energy to laugh but the knot of worry in his stomach loosened just a little. “Y’know,” he said in a low voice, eye flicking to Carolina across the room. Most people wore black but with her hair she was a bright flame. “Y’know, sometimes I’m just so goddamn sure we’ll make it. I can almost feel the grass under my feet.” Or taste a fresh apple on his tongue, or hear her off-key singing lullabies. “Sometimes the dreams are so real that it’s waking up that feels fake.”

“And sometimes?”

“Sometimes,” he said, stealing North’s glass and downing the wine in one swallow, “sometimes I know, I  _ know _ that it doesn’t matter how  _ goddamn bad _ I want it because I just can’t control every variable. Sometimes I just  _ know _ that this is all I’m ever gonna get.”

“Why do it, then? I mean, relationships are nice, but why are you doing something you’re sure will break your heart?”

He couldn’t hear her laugh from here but he knew she was, could see her, would’ve sensed it even if he couldn’t. “I love her,” he said. “What else is there?”


End file.
